The Body Farm ks-5

by Patricia Cornwell

  "Kay" -his voice softened"-I don't want this to be true any more than you do. I'm the one who recommended her to ERF. I'm the one who's been working on our hiring her after she graduates from UVA. Do you think I'm feeling very good?"

  "There must be some other way this could have happened." He slowly shook his head.

  "Even if someone had discovered Lucy's PIN, they still couldn't have gotten in because the biometric system would also require a scan of her actual finger."

  "Then she wanted to be caught," I replied.

  "Lucy more than anyone would know that if she went into classified automated files, she would leave log-in and log-out times, activity logs, and other tracks."

  "I agree. She would know this better than anyone. And that's why I'm more interested in possible motive. In other words, what was she trying to prove? Who was she trying to hurt?"

  "Benton," I said.

  "What will happen?"

  "OPR will conduct an official investigation," he answered, referring to the Bureau's Office of Professional Responsibility, which was the equivalent of a police department's Internal Affairs.

  "If she's guilty?"

  "It depends on whether we can prove she stole anything. If she did, she's committed a felony."

  "And if she didn't?"

  "Again, it depends on what OPR finds. But I think it's safe to say that at the very least Lucy has violated our security codes and no longer has a future with the FBI," he said. My mouth was so dry I almost couldn't talk.

  "She will be devastated." Wesley's eyes were shadowed by fatigue and disappointment. I knew how much he liked my niece.

  "In the meantime," he went on in the same flat tone he used when reviewing cases, "she can't stay at Quantico. She's already been told to pack her things. Maybe she can stay in Richmond with you until our investigation is concluded."

  "Of course, but you know I won't be there all the time."

  "We're not placing her under house arrest, Kay," he said, and his eyes got warmer for an instant. Very briefly I caught a glimpse of what stirred silently in his cool, dark waters. He got up.

  "I'll drive her to Richmond tonight." I got up, too.

  "I hope you're all right," he said, and I knew what he meant, and I knew I could not think about that now.

  "Thank you," I replied, and impulses fired crazily between neurons, as if a fierce battle were being fought in my mind. Lucy was stripping her bed when I found her in her room not much later, and she turned her back to me when I walked in.

  "What can I help you with?" I asked. She stuffed sheets into a pillowcase.

  "Nothing," she said.

  "I've got it under control." Her quarters were plainly furnished with institutional twin beds, desks, and chairs of oak veneer. By Yuppie apartment standards, the rooms in Washington dormitory were dreary, but if viewed as barracks they weren't half bad. I wondered where Lucy's suite mates and roommate were and if they had any idea what had happened.

  "If you'll just check the wardrobe to make sure I've gotten everything," Lucy said.

  "It's the one on the right. And check the drawers."

  "Everything is empty unless the coat hangers are yours. These nice padded ones."

  "They're Mother's."

  "Then I assume you want them."

  "Nope. Leave them for the next idiot who ends up in this pit."

  "Lucy," I said, "it's not the Bureau's fault."

  "It's not fair." She knelt on her suitcase to fasten the clasps.

  "Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?"

  "Legally, you are innocent until proven guilty. But until this breach of security is sorted out, you can't blame the Academy for not wanting you to continue working in classified areas. Besides, you haven't been arrested. You've simply been asked to go on leave for a while. " She turned to face me, her eyes exhausted and red.

  "For a while means forever." As I questioned her closely in the car, she vacillated from pitiful tears to volatile flares that scorched everything within reach. Then she fell asleep, and I knew nothing more than I had before. As a cold rain began to fall, I turned on fog lamps and followed the trail of bright red taillights streaking the blacktop ahead. At unwelcome intervals rain and clouds gathered densely in dips and turns, making it almost impossible to see. But instead of pulling over and waiting for the weather to pass, I shifted to a lower gear and drove on in my machine of hurled walnut, soft leather, and steel.

  I still wasn't certain why I had bought my charcoal Mercedes 500E, except that after Mark died, it had seemed important to drive something new. It might have been the memories, for we had loved and fought with each other desperately in my previous car. Or perhaps it was simply that life got harder as I got older and I needed more power to get by.

  I heard Lucy stir as I turned into Windsor Farms, the old Richmond neighborhood where I lived amid stately Georgian and Tudor homes not far from the banks of the James. My headlights caught tiny reflectors on ankles of an unfamiliar boy riding a bicycle just ahead, and I passed a couple I did not recognize who were holding hands and walking their dog. Gum trees had dropped another load of prickly seeds over my yard, several rolled newspapers were on the porch, and the super cans were still parked by the street. It did not require long absences for me to feel like an outsider and for my house to look like no one was home. While Lucy carried in luggage, I started the gas logs in the living room and put on a pot of Darjeeling tea. For a while I sat alone in front of the fire, listening to the sounds of my niece as she got settled, took a shower, and in general took her time. We were about to have a discussion that filled both of us with dread.

  "Are you hungry?" I asked when I heard her walk in.

  "No. Do you have any beer?"

  I hesitated, then replied, "In the refrigerator in the bar."

  I listened a little longer without turning around, because when I looked at Lucy I saw her the way I wanted her to be. Sipping tea, I mustered up the strength to face this frighteningly beautiful and brilliant woman with whom I shared snippets of genetic code. After all these years, it was time we met. She came to the fire and sat on the floor, leaning against the stone hearth as she drank Icehouse beer out of the bottle. She had helped herself to a boldly colorful warm-up suit I wore on the infrequent occasions when I played tennis these days, and her feet were bare, her wet hair combed back. I realized that if I didn't know her and she walked past, I would turn to look again, and this wasn't solely due to her fine figure and face. One sensed the facility with which Lucy spoke, walked, and in the smallest ways guided her body and her eyes. She made everything seem easy, which was partially why she did not have many friends.

  "Lucy," I began, "help me understand."

  "I've been fucked," she said, taking a swallow of beer.

  "If that's true, then how?"

  "What do you mean'if'?" She stared hard at me, her eyes filling with tears.

  "How can you think for even a minute… Oh, shit. What's the point?" She looked away.

  "I can't help you if you don't tell me the truth," I said, getting up as I decided that I wasn't hungry, either. I went to the bar and poured Scotch over crushed ice.

  "Let's start with the facts," I suggested as I returned to my chair.

  "We know someone entered ERF at around three a.m. on this past Tuesday. We know your PIN was used and your thumb was scanned. It is further documented by the system that this person-again, who has your PIN and print-went into numerous files. The log-out time was at precisely four thirty-eight A. M. "

  "I've been set up and sabotaged," Lucy said.

  "Where were you while all this was going on?"

  "I was asleep." She angrily gulped down the rest of her beer and got up for another one. I sipped my Scotch slowly because it was not possible to drink a Dewar's Mist fast.

  "It has been alleged that there have been nights when your bed was empty," I quietly said.

  "And you know what? It's nobody's business."

  "Well, it is, and
you know that. Were you in your bed the night of the break-in?"

  "It's my business what bed I'm in, when, and where, and nobody else's," she said. We were silent as I thought of Lucy sitting on top of the picnic table in the dark, her face illuminated by the match cupped in another woman's hands. I heard her speaking to her friend and understood the emotions carrying her words, for I knew the language of intimacy well.

  I knew when love was in someone's voice, and I knew when it was not.

  "Exactly where were you when ERF was broken into?" I asked her again.

  "Or should I ask you instead who you were with?"

  "} don't ask you who you're with."

  "You would if it might save me from being in a lot of trouble."

  "My private life is irrelevant," she went on.

  "No, I think it is rejection you fear," I said.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "I saw you in the picnic area the other night. You were with a friend." She looked away.

  "So now you're spying on me, too." Her voice trembled.

  "Well, don't waste any sermons on me, and you can forget Catholic guilt because I don't believe in Catholic guilt."

  "Lucy, I'm not judging you," I said, but in a way I was.

  "Help me understand."

  "You imply I'm unnatural or abnormal, otherwise I would not need understanding. I would simply be accepted without a second thought. "

  "Can your friend vouch for your whereabouts at three o'clock Tuesday morning?" I asked.

  "No," she answered.

  "I see" was all I said, and my acceptance of her position was a concession that the girl I knew was gone. I did not know this Lucy, and I wondered what I had done wrong.

  "What are you going to do now?" she asked me as the evening tensely wore on.

  "I've got this case in North Carolina. I have a feeling I'm going to be there a lot for a while," I said.

  "What about your office here?"

  "Fielding's holding down the fort. I do have court in the morning, I think. In fact, I need to call Rose to verify the time."

  "What kind of case?"

  "A homicide."

  "I figured that much. Can I come with you?"

  "If you'd like."

  "Well, maybe I'll just go back to Charlottesville."

  "And do what?" I asked. Lucy looked frightened.

  "I don't know. I don't know how I'd get there, either."

  "You're welcome to my car when I'm not using it. Or you could go to Miami until the semester's over, then back to UVA." She downed the last mouthful of beer and got up, her eyes bright with tears again.

  "Go ahead and admit it. Aunt Kay. You think I did it, don't you?"

  "Lucy," I said honestly, "I don't know what to think. You and the evidence are saying two different things."

  "I have never doubted you." She looked at me as if I had broken her heart.

  "You're welcome to stay here through Christmas," I said.

  11

  The member of the North Richmond Gang on trial the next morning wore a double-breasted navy suit and an Italian silk tie with a perfect Windsor knot. His white shirt looked crisp; he was cleanly shaven and minus his earring. Trial lawyer Tod Coldwell had dressed his client well because he knew that jurors have an exceedingly difficult time resisting the notion that what you see is what you get. Of course, I believed that axiom, too, which was why I introduced into evidence as many color photographs from the victim's autopsy as possible. It was safe to say that Coldwell, who drove a red Ferrari, did not like me much.

  "Isn't it true, Mrs. Scarpetta," Coldwell pontificated in court this cool autumn day, "that people under the influence of cocaine can become very violent and even demonstrate superhuman strength?"

  "Certainly cocaine can cause the user to become delusional and excited," I continued directing my answers to the jury.

  "Superhuman strength, as you call it, is often associated with cocaine or PCP-which is a horse tranquilizer."

  "And the victim had both cocaine and benzoylecgonine in his blood," Coldwell went on as if I had just agreed with him.

  "Yes, he did."

  "Mrs. Scarpetta, I wonder if you would explain to the jury what that means?"

  "I would first like to explain to the jury that I am a medical doctor with a law degree. I have a specialty in pathology and a subspecialty in forensic pathology, as you've already stipulated, Mr. Coldwell. Therefore, I would appreciate being addressed as Dr. Scarpetta instead of Mrs. Scarpetta. "

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Would you please repeat the question?"

  "Would you explain to the jury what it means if someone has cocaine" -he glanced at his notes"-and benzoylecgonine in his blood?"

  "Benzoylecgonine is the metabolite of cocaine. To say that someone had both on board means some of the cocaine the victim had taken had already metabolized and some had not," I replied, aware of Lucy in a back corner, her face partially hidden by a column. She looked miserable.

  "Which would indicate he was a chronic abuser, especially since he had many old needle tracks. And this may also suggest that when my client was confronted by him on the night of July third, my client had a very excited, agitated, and violent person on his hands, and had no choice but to defend himself." Coldwell was pacing, his dapper client watching me like a twitchy cat.

  "Mr. Coldwell," I said, "the victim-Jonah Jones-was shot sixteen times with a Tee-Nine nine-millimeter gun that holds thirty-six rounds. Seven of those shots were to his back, and three of them were close or contact shots to the back of Mr. Jones's head.

  "In my opinion, this is inconsistent with a shooting in which the shooter was defending himself, especially since Mr. Jones had a blood alcohol of point two-nine, which is almost three times the legal limit in Virginia. In other words, the victim's motor skills and judgment were substantially impaired when he was assaulted. Frankly, I'm amazed that Mr. Jones could even stand up." Coldwell swung around to face Judge Poe, who had been nicknamed "the Raven" for as long as I had been in Richmond. He was weary to his ancient soul of drug dealers killing each other, of children carrying guns to school and shooting each other on the bus.

  "Your Honor," Coldwell said dramatically, "I would ask that Mrs. Scarpetta's last statement be struck from the record since it is both speculative and inflammatory, and without a doubt beyond her area of expertise. "

  "Well, now, I don't know that what the doctor has to say is beyond her expertise, Mr. Coldwell, and she's already asked you politely to refer to her properly as Dr. Scarpetta, and I'm losing patience with your antics and ploys…"

  "But, Your Honor"

  "The fact is that I've had Dr. Scarpetta in my courtroom on many occasions and I'm well aware of her level of expertise," the judge went on in his Southern way of speaking that reminded me of pulling warm taffy.

  "Your Honor…?"

  "Seems to me she deals with this sort of thing every day…"

  "Your Honor?"

  "Mr. Coldwell," the Raven thundered, his balding pate turning red, "if you interrupt me one more goddam time I'm going to hold you in contempt of court and let you spend a few nights in the goddam city jail! Are we clear?"

  "Yes, sir." Lucy was craning her neck to see, and every juror was alert.

  "I'm going to allow the record to reflect exactly what Dr. Scarpetta said," the judge went on.

  "No further questions," Coldwell said tersely. Judge Poe concluded with a violent bang of the gavel that woke up an old woman toward the back who had been fast asleep beneath a black straw hat for most of the morning. Startled, she sat straight up and blurted, "Who is it?" Then she remembered where she was and began to cry.

  "It's all right. Mama," I heard another woman say as we adjourned for lunch. Before leaving downtown, I stopped by the Health Department's Division of Vital Records, where an old friend and colleague of mine was the state registrar. In Virginia, one could not legally be born or buried without Gloria Loving's signature, and though she was
as local as shad roe, she knew her counterpart in every state in the union. Over the years, I had relied on Gloria many times to verify that people had been on this planet or had not, that they had been married, divorced, or were adopted.

  I was told she was on her lunch break in the Madison Building cafeteria. At quarter past one, I found Gloria alone at a table, eating vanilla yogurt and canned fruit cocktail. Mostly, she was reading a thick paperback thriller that was a New York Times bestseller, according to the cover.

  "If I had to eat lunches like yours, I wouldn't bother," I said, pulling out a chair. She looked up at me, her blank expression followed by joy.

  "Goodness gracious! Why, my Lord. What on earth are you doing here, Kay?"

  "I work across the street, in case you've forgotten." Delighted, she laughed.

  "Can I get you a coffee? Honey, you look tired." Gloria Loving's name had defined her at birth, and she had grown up true to her calling. She was a big, generous woman of some fifty years who deeply cared about every certificate that crossed her desk. Records were more than paper and nosology codes to her, and she would hire, fire, or blast General Assembly in the name of one. It did not matter whose.

  "No coffee, thanks," I said.

  "Well, I heard you didn't work across the street anymore."

  "I love the way people resign me when I've not been here for a couple of weeks. I'm a consultant with the FBI now. I'm in and out a lot."

  "In and out of North Carolina, I guess, based on what I've been following in the news. Even Clan Rather was talking about the Steiner girl's case the other night. It was on CNN, too. Lord, it's cold in here."

  I looked around at the bleak state government cafeteria where few people seemed thrilled with their lives. Many were huddled over trays, jackets and sweaters buttoned to their chins.

  "They've got all the thermostats reset to sixty degrees to conserve energy, if that isn't the joke of all time," Gloria went on.

  "We have steam heat that comes out of the Medical College of Virginia, so cutting the thermostats doesn't save one watt of electricity."

  "It feels colder in here than sixty degrees," I commented.